The Frost Queen’s Blade by Meg Smitherman EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Meg Smitherman
- Language: English
- Genre: Sword & Sorcery Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
SEVEN YEARS AGO
News of her mother’s death came without ceremony in the form of a
hastily scribbled note. The pageboy hadn’t wanted to say the words
aloud, presumably, afraid of embarrassment or hurting Elma, whose mother
was gone.
She held the letter in her hands long after the page handed it to her.
Long after she read it. She sat in her favorite garden, the one with fruit trees
and large firm plants shaped like artichokes, plants that thrived under a
year-round sun. The stone bench beneath her was cool in the shade, her
outstretched feet warming in a ray of sunlight.
You are summoned home, read the note. Your mother is dead. The king
requires his heir.
You are summoned home.
Of course, Elma’s father did not write a letter of his own. No, Elma
thought — the moment his wife’s last breath had passed her lips, the king
would have ordered a messenger to send for his only daughter. Heir to the
throne of Rothen. And thus, a messenger had arrived that morning with
word of the queen’s passing, and upon hearing it, Elma’s pageboy scribbled
a note and brought it to the garden.
So here Elma sat, finally crumpling the note in her fist.
This moment had always been inevitable. Elma knew her life in Mekya
was temporary, knew that the caress of hot dry air on her skin, golden sun
against her eyes when she closed them, scratchy grass tickling the soles of
her bare feet — it was all temporary. She was only in Mekya for
safekeeping, to stay out of her father’s way, to give him peace and quiet. To
be someone else’s problem.
Until she wasn’t.
Elma had not thought that her mother would die before Elma came of
age. She was only fourteen now. She had imagined returning home to her
mother and father together, on the first day of her eighteenth year, as was
tradition. Not with warm embraces, but with a distant formality, cold
enough to fit the city of her birth.
“Your Highness?” The pageboy waited, uneasy, near the edge of the
garden.
Elma shoved the note into her bodice — her dress was light and gauzy
and not substantial enough for pockets.
“Don’t call me that,” she said under her breath, not loud enough for the
page to hear. She was next in line to the throne whether she liked it or not.
“I didn’t quite catch that, Your Highness,” the pageboy said, his
forehead shining with sweat. He clearly wanted to go back inside, where
cool stone kept the heat from permeating. Out here, there was no escape
from summer’s scalding touch.
Elma loved the heat. Her naturally pale skin had long since browned in
the sun, her thick black hair cut short to her chin to keep her neck cool. She
was born of the north, but she had bloomed in Mekya, so Mekyan she
would always be in her heart.
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